Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 20, 2026
Acquisition and Semi-Automated Analysis of Respiratory Muscle Surface Electromyography
Published on: January 24, 2025
Real time identification of active regions in muscles from high density surface electromyogram
1Mathematical Biology and Physiology, Dipartimento di Elettronica e Telecomunicazioni, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, Turin 10129, Italy.
Purpose:
Developing a real time method for the localization of muscle activity regions from high density surface electromyogram (EMG).
Method:
The inverse problem of source localization is solved by a regularized technique applied to an over-determined problem searching for the least mean squares approximation of the recorded signal with a linear combination of a set of basis waveforms (subject specific).
Results:
The method, tested on simulations, provides accurate estimates of the mean location of the sources (in ideal conditions, it has about 1 mm of mean error in locating the depth, negligible error in locating the transverse location of the active region). For reasonably small perturbations, it is stable to possible detection problems (e.g., misalignment between the electrodes and the fibres, noise), inaccurate knowledge of the anatomical and physical properties of the investigated tissues (e.g., tissue thickness, location of IZ, fibre length, tissue conductivity) with mean estimation errors of about 1.5-2.8 mm.
Conclusions:
An innovative algorithm is proposed for the non-invasive localization of the active regions of a muscle. It is real time and opens potential future applications for prosthesis control and biofeedback.
